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Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” that were procured for his sex-trafficking ring.
The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to add significant pressure on the White House to release the so-called Epstein files.
In one of the memos, Epstein wrote to his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in 2011 that Trump “spent hours at my house” in the company of one of the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficked victims.
The memo describes the president as “that dog that hasn’t barked”, and notes Trump had “never once been mentioned” in connection with what has become a long-running scandal overshadowing his second term of office.
A second message, sent by Epstein in April 2011 to Trump biographer Michael Wolff, indicates that Trump had asked him to resign from Mar-a-Lago, the president’s exclusive members-only club in Florida.
But Epstein said he was “never a member ever” and adds “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.
Epstein’s long-time friend and co-conspirator Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction for sex-trafficking crimes, including procuring girls to be abused.
Trump has consistently denied having knowledge of Epstein’s activities, which included the operation of a sex-trafficking ring that procured teen girls for wealthy and influential associates. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody.
But Democrats have accused the White House of covering up Trump’s alleged involvement and have consistently called on Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, to release documents about the scandal which have come to be known as the Epstein Files.
In a statement, the oversight committee’s ranking member, California Democrat Robert Garcia, said: “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.”
More details soon…
